


the house of god

by godfreyindustries



Category: Hemlock Grove
Genre: Canon Divergence, One-Shot, Short Story, a bit of an AU, he inspired this thank u roman, it’s just based on roman, neither does the author but we aren’t going to talk about that, roman doesn’t know shit about church
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-13
Updated: 2020-02-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:02:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22691461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/godfreyindustries/pseuds/godfreyindustries
Summary: a very loose one-shot i wrote for an english assignment last year, based on roman godfrey after the events of season one. no spoilers are explicitly mentioned.it’s a bit random but it’s a little story based on him, facing his loneliness.
Kudos: 6





	the house of god

**Author's Note:**

> i have no idea what this is but please do enjoy :’)

He’d heard that there was always room in the house of God, so that’s where he went. 

The car park was surprisingly full for a morning service in the middle of nowhere. The only free spots were right at the back. He parked there, ending up next to a minivan with the back windows plastered in stickers. His mother would’ve crucified him if he’d done that to her car. He didn’t know if that was normal or not, seeing as it was all he’d ever cared to know, but maybe the minivan, covered in stickers clearly put onto the windows by young children was normal, and the things he knew weren’t. 

He’d been driving all night. The forests had turned to grassy fields as quickly as the sky had lightened up. It hurt his eyes at first, but that was probably because he hadn’t properly slept in a while. He stared out the front window, looking out at the yellowing fields, and at the occasional passing bird. A crow flew down to land on the fence post in front of him, they locked eyes, and then the bird took off again, flying in the direction he’d come from. 

“Stupid fucking bird.” 

It wasn’t like the bird would fly all the way back to his house in Pennsylvania. Birds, as far as he was concerned, didn’t understand poetic irony, but then again, neither did he.

He’d never really believed in any sort of higher power. In his mind, people were in charge of themselves. God, or gods, or whatever people believed in, as far as he was concerned, were just there to answer the unpleasant questions. Maybe he’d go inside to ask. Maybe he’d get an answer.

He sat there for a while, staring off at the horizon, which rippled from the summer heat, making the fields of yellow grass look like water. He wasn’t sure how long he sat there, just staring off into the distance. The sleep deprivation was definitely preventing him from thinking of much. For some reason, all he could remember thinking about was the feeling of running through water. He let out a slight chuckle, which was nothing much more than a forced exhale. It was probably his subconscious, or whatever, telling him that running was the wrong thing to do. Water slowed you down, especially when you were in up to your knees. 

Another car pulled up beside him. A woman got out of the front seat, and began to take her two young children out of their seatbelts. They were clearly dressed in their Sunday best, or whatever it was called when people got all dressed up for church, clothed in white like they were angels. His mother wore white, she always had. He’d jokingly said it was because she was ‘hiding the bad stuff she did’, it had stopped being a joke after his father had died, and the pair of them had been dragged down to the police station for questioning. They’d been the only ones in the house when it had happened, so naturally they were suspects. 

The woman rapped her knuckles on his window, jerking him back to reality. She didn’t look angry, not really at all. Her blonde hair fell over the hairband she was wearing, and into her face. He was too tired to make out her expression, he just hoped it wasn’t resignation, because that always made him feel like he’d done something wrong. She motioned for him to roll his window down, and he complied.

“Sorry,” he said, jumping to speak before she could tell him off for staring, or loitering in the car park. 

She shook her head. Her kids stared up at him, like he was some exotic animal in a zoo they’d never seen before. He supposed he was, they’d probably never seen a runaway before. He tried to ignore them, and focus properly on their mother’s face.

“You comin’ in?” She asked, gesturing to the church with her free hand, her other was being held by one of her kids. She had a thick midwestern accent, which made it harder for him to understand her.

“Oh, I don’t go to…” He trailed off, not wanting to admit to just  _ sitting _ in a church car park. It just screamed ‘breakdown’. “I’m just here to talk to the confession guy.”

She chuckled. “‘The confession guy’, alright.” Her gaze dropped down to the upturned face of one of her children, she poked her tongue out at the child, who copied her. When she looked back up again, he’d taken to staring out the windscreen again, looking far away, his eyes glassy, and the corners of his mouth twitching downward. “Come to the service with us.”

“Stranger,” one of the children warned, lisping on the ‘s’ sound. 

“It’s alright.”

He looked back over, quickly wiping his eyes on the back of his hand. His mother had always said men don’t cry, and when his father died, that’s what she’d said he was. He was the ‘man of the house’. He looked down at his hands, where he was absentmindedly twisting a bronze ring about on his middle finger. “I don’t believe in God,” he admitted, keeping his voice hushed, like the people inside the church could hear him. He used to believe in God, back when he was forced to do ‘Bible study’ at the fancy elementary school he’d gone to, back when he had a future, and he cared enough to do well. Then he’d realised that there was so much goddamn shit in the world, that God, or the gods, certainly didn’t love, or want to forgive all of their creations. A few years later, a bottle of stolen whiskey had convinced him that there was no bullshit higher power, it was just him.

“Neither do I,” the woman said, not bothering to keep her voice down. “But I want my kids to believe in something. It might help them one day.” She exhaled, keeping her eyes trained on him. “C’mon, you make the parking lot look untidy.” She stepped back from the door of his car, herding her kids out of the way, one clutching onto each of her hands.

He thought for a moment, and then pushed the door open. He stood up, having to quickly grab onto the canvas roof of the car to keep his balance, his vision dipped out for a moment, leaving him to just stare into nothing. He blinked a few times, and the world came back into focus. He closed the car door behind him, tucked his hands in the front pockets of his slacks, and followed after the woman and her children.


End file.
